Trends and Applications

Data lakes are often viewed as the ultimate silo breakers, integrating mountains of data frompoint solutions for ERP, CRM, enterprise data warehouse, cloud and on-premises applications.However, if the enterprise data lake is not leveraged appropriately, it often ends up being just adata dump or worse still a "data swamp."

Robotic process automation (RPA) is gaining enterprise acceptance, as the C-suite welcomes the concept of reduced costs and improved productivity through automation. RPA's foundational technology consists of an army of intelligent software robots that mimic the actions of real people and eliminate manual, repetitive work by humans—cascading positive impact on the bottom line. By leveraging the automation power of a robot, organizations not only make their processes run more efficiently but also enable business groups to monitor processes over time and learn where further improvements can be made.

The deadline looms on the horizon. On May 25, 2018, the European Union will enact some of the most stringent data privacy regulations the world has ever seen. These regulations will impact thousands of companies around the world, not only EU-based organizations but any company that collects or processes personal data on EU residents. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) recognizes the "fundamental right" of people to control what data is stored about them and how it is used.

There are two prevailing views when it comes to blockchain and enterprise data. One is that it's the most secure solution ever to come along. The other is that it is the fad of the moment that puts essential data in the unregulated wilds of the global internet.

To sustain and drive viable businesses now, and into the rapidly changing future, IT needs to stop firefighting. Reacting when things go wrong—after an incident has caused damage—incurs costs. Taking a proactive, preventative approach using predictive knowhow moves IT out of the proverbial hot seat and gives them much-needed control to keep critical business systems up and running.

Self-service data discovery has been the buzz word in the BI industry for the past 3 years and is touted as the solution to many problems. Yet, the BI industry has a dismal adoption rate of only 22%, which has plagued the industry for several years. In response to this grim number, we must look around for a solution in other sectors that provides self-service to millions of people without any IT support. In essence, we are looking for a self-service paradigm that can give us insights about how to solve the adoption challenge and learn from it.

Columns - Database Elaborations

Don't let the term "unstructured data" confuse you. Structure exists, somehow and somewhere, within unstructured source data. It is that subtle, possibly even encrypted, structure that contains the gems of knowledge that an enterprise seeks. Sometimes those gems only shine when extracted and combined with other little gems from other data sources.

Columns - DBA Corner

Blockchain is a distributed, shared, permissioned ledger for recording transactions with consensus, provenance, immutability and finality. It is the technology that drives virtual currencies like Bitcoin. But its potential spans many more industries and use cases than just virtual currencies.

Columns - SQL Server Drill Down

New Year's Day is a holiday we mark both with a big party and with reflection and re-evaluation. New Year's resolutions are a time-honored tradition here in the U.S., with more than 40% of Americans making conscious decisions to do things differently. (Yes, there are people who actually keep track of these statistics.) Yet, despite all of the good intentions, less than 10% of people who make New Year's resolutions are able to keep them. In the spirit of new beginnings, here are a handful of promises for the SQL Server professional which adhere to the three cardinal rules of successful New Year's resolutions: simple, tangible, and obvious.

Columns - MongoDB Matters

MongoDB 3.6 was announced publically in November and should be in production by the time this article is posted. There are no shock features in this version, but it is an attractive release that should see rapid uptake.

MV Community

Each year, Database Trends and Applications magazine highlights solutions that promise to help organizations derive greater benefit from their data, make better decisions, work more efficiently, achieve greater security, and address emerging challenges. A variety of MV companies have made the cut this year, including products from Entrinsik, Kore Technologies, Revelation Software, and Rocket Software.

Rocket Software, a global technology provider specializing in app modernization and systems optimization, has won the 2017 "Growth Partner of the Year" award from Ellucian, recognizing the company's technical support. Ellucian, a provider of software and services built to power higher education, selected Rocket for the award in recognition of the company's technical support for Ellucian's cloud-based solutions and for its role in helping the company transition to its current SaaS license model.